


A Raven from Hardhome

by Reiven



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Daenerys Targaryen Saves the Day, Episode S07E06: Death if the Enemy, Gen, Jon Snow POV, Westeros Avengers, unlikely companions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 06:23:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11868486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reiven/pseuds/Reiven
Summary: Jon hadn’t sent Gendry to call for aid. He’s sent him to let Daenerys know of what happened, to let her know that the dead were coming and they were close. He hadn't sent Gendry for any other reason than that.But she came. She saved them all, not knowing then that she'd be leaving with two dragons instead of three.





	A Raven from Hardhome

He hadn’t expected anything when he sent Gendry off to get word to Daenerys. He just needed her to know what had happened; what was coming, or rather what was already on their doorstep.

He knew that most of them weren’t going to make it back from beyond the Wall alive, if any of them. He’d led all these men, these good, loyal men out into the cold abyss and towards certain doom and they were all going to die as a result.

But he needed her to know that they hadn’t died for nothing.

The only thing he could really hope for was that she’d speak kindly of him in her raven to his siblings, that she’d tell them he died doing what he thought was right and protecting all that he held dear. That he died to protect them all.

His dear sister Arya that he thought perished with their father at King’s Landing so long ago, or if she’d somehow survived, that perhaps she’d found herself somewhere safe and protected, away from all the fighting and away from all the suffering. He hadn’t allowed himself a moment to think about her when he received the raven, because then he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself to abandoning everything to run back to Winterfell to see her and Bran. So many things had happened since the last they saw each other, more than he could truly put into words but he never once stopped thinking about his siblings lost out in the world and so far from his reach.

And Sansa, if nothing else, he was glad he got to spend the last few months with her, getting to know her better, getting to know the real her. She’d make a good queen that the people in North would be proud to call their own. He just hoped that Daenerys would look kindly upon his headstrong sister, because they were both headstrong women in their own right.

The dead were closing in on them. And death was imminent.

Jon spared one last glance at the men around him.

Tormund, a person who’d gone from being the enemy to one of the people he trusted most in the world. Trust was an invaluable thing to have that one did not find very often in others, and he’d somehow found it in the unlikeliest of places. Tormund had followed him into the jaws of death over and over again, and he knew that as long as he had breath in him, he’d continue to follow Jon towards whatever end and Jon appreciated it more than he could ever put into words.

The rest of the men were people he didn’t know or only knew by reputation and from the tales of others. Jorah Mormont had turned out to be the complete opposite of the person he’d imagined. He knew of Ser Jorah from the Lord Commander Mormont and from stories his father used to tell to him in the past, but meeting the man; hearing the reverence in Daenerys’s voice when she spoke of him, when she spoke to him; the loyalty he showed her and the trust she showed him in return, to Jon, that spoke volumes for both Daenerys and the man himself. And if Jon put trust in nothing else, he did so in that kind of undying devotion. He respected it, as he’d come to respect both Jorah and Dany.

He’d only seen The Hound once in his life and that was enough to leave a lasting impression on him, and he knew of Beric Donddarion and Thoros of Myr through the stories told by the men of the Night’s Watch over a flagon of ale while surrounding a campfire in the midnight darkness and bone chilling coldness on the Wall.

But these men, the man he trusted implicitly and the other men he’d come to learn to trust over such a short period of time (had it only been a day?) somehow, he had faith—beyond the belief in some higher being, or some invisible god—in these few good men that had his back, that had saved him more times in that battle than he really deserved since he’d dragged them all to death. They’d lost Thoros first, but he would not be without company for long because they would all be soon to follow him.

In that moment, as the dead closed in on them and the air became suffocating with the stench of the rotting corpses.

In that moment when Jon looked around and could only see the sea of carcasses surrounding them like the blackened snow under their feet.

In that moment, he looked around at the five people still left, still fighting, still swinging their weapons and unwilling to go down without a fight.

In that moment, Jon realized that he couldn’t have wished for a better group of people to die alongside with.

He was prepared to die.

And then the fires came.

The scorching heat singeing his hair and sweltering on his face even though it burned so far away.

Second came the deafening roar from the distance, a cacophony of sound rumbling like many creatures made of thunder and combined into one, causing the snowy mountains in the horizon to come tumbling down the side like a white wave of death.

And all of a sudden the enormous shadow swallowed up the murky orange sphere in the sky above their heads.

Then another.

And another.

And suddenly the only thing they could see were dragons and a barrage of dragon fire, burning away the dead in their vicinity. Where there had been a sea of corpses around him, Jon could only see raging fires burning off the molten remains.

He’d seen the dragons flying around Dragonstone while he was there, and the sight was as awe-inspiring as it was terrifying. He was there when Daenerys returned from annihilating the Lannister army and to see that creature he’d only heard about in stories of old as a child from so up-close, he didn’t know whether to be terrified or to bend the knee to the beast itself.

But it was nothing compared to actually seeing the dragons in action. Not just one dragon, but all three of them; all three of her children.

In that moment, watching the awestruck expression on his face being mirrored on the faces of everyone there, perhaps lesser on Ser Jorah’s face because he’d been Daenerys’s council since the beginning; watching Daenerys herself, mounting the largest of the three dragons, flying around and raining death and destruction and dragon fire on the dead that they had come so close to being a part of and taking down nearly half their army in little to no time; in that moment, Jon thought that this was a leader and a queen that he would be honoured to serve under; one that he would be honoured to bend the knee to.

Jon was a member of the Night’s Watch, and the thing he was taught was that the only thing you truly had, the only thing you could really count on in the world was that your brothers would always have your back, and Jon believed that.

He believed it right to the very end.

When his own brothers drove knives into his belly and a child he trusted drove one straight through his heart.

But he slowly learned to trust again. He trusted Edd and the trusted Tormund and Davos and he believed that he could trust this Targaryen queen and mother of dragons.

After all, she didn’t need to come to his aid; truthfully, Jon hadn’t even sent Gendry to call for aid. He’s sent him to let Daenerys know of what happened, to let her know that the dead were coming and they were close. He sent Gendry to tell her that in the end they all failed and he hoped that somehow she would find it in her heart to forgive him for dying and taking along her most loyal subject and so many other men with him. He sent Gendry with the knowledge that he was not going to see him or her, or any of his siblings ever again and up until the very last moment he’d made peace with it.

But she came, she brought all her dragons and she flew the hundreds of miles in such a short amount of time to save them even though she didn’t have to, and even though he never would have asked her to.

But she came, this foreign queen and exiled daughter of the most hated king; this conqueror with her hoard of savages and the mythical beasts she had at her beck and call and Jon couldn’t think of anyone in the Seven Kingdoms who would extend such aid to a stranger for no foreseeable compensation and no promise of subjugation.

But she came just because she was a good person at the heart of it all, and a good person who really did want to help make the world a better place.

She came—but she would then leave with two dragons instead of three.

In the split second before he hit the freezing cold water, the feel of bare bones and sloughing, rotting flesh against his skin, the pungent odour of death assaulting his nostrils like the icy cold wind on his face; in that split second, Jon realized that he would have been honoured to call her his queen.

 

** THE END **

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr @[reivenesque](http://reivenesque.tumblr.com/) or help reblog [this story](http://reivenesque.tumblr.com/post/164442544183/a-raven-from-hardhome-jon-povset-during-the) on there.


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